Yet the nation grew weary of the conflict. ‘A fruitless carnage – so much death but not peace’ – that was the charge, and Marlborough had to face it. But although the Duke was now without royal favour, no politician dared put him down. Many coveted his political influence, but none felt brave enough to challenge his generalship. And, for the moment, Marlborough had more pressing matters, soon to be terrible matters. He was with his great friend and fellow campaigner, Eugene of Savoy, preparing once more to fight the French, this time at a bridgehead on the River Scheldt outside the obscure Netherlands town of Oudenarde.
During the next few hours, 20,000 men or so would die. Prince Eugene of Savoy had command of the right, Marlborough of the centre. The Dutch allies behind them would cross the river to their left. Before them was the French army. It was 11 July 1708. It was a battle of confusion and seemingly hopeless slaughter. The French would be decimated: 18,000 of them would be killed. But it wasn’t over. Marlborough and Eugene laid siege to the great fortress of Lille, defended by 15,000 Frenchmen. They held out until December. Then Bruges fell and then Ghent. At the same time, the navy took the Mediterranean island of Minorca and, as a bitter, freezing winter covered Europe, all military sense suggested that the French were beaten. Louis XIV talked peace with the Dutch. Marlborough talked terms, but in great secrecy, with his nephew, the Duke of Berwick. The Duke was the illegitimate Jacobite son of King James II. He was a general of the French army and had fought with distinction against Marlborough’s armies in Spain and now in the Lowlands. Thus were the families at war in eighteenth-century Europe – and the war would continue for many more winters for, if nothing else, the reason for the War of the Spanish Succession had not been truly resolved. And there was a reasonable fear that if the war against Spain continued while France was allowed to withdraw quietly, then the French might get back their military breath and once again threaten the Alliance. The French protested that the war was really over and that they would no longer defend Philip, Duke of Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson, in his claim to the Spanish throne. They would withdraw from Spain and even give over French fortresses to the Alliance. But what Louis XIV wouldn’t, and couldn’t be expected to do, was actually go to war against his grandson. And it was on this point that the peace broke down.
The combined armies of the Alliance once more gathered their guns and men to face the French south of what would, in the twentieth century, become a notorious battlefield, Mons. But this was 1709 and the place was the pretty wooded countryside of Malplaquet. Some 90,000 Frenchmen faced 110,000 allied soldiers. The French cavalry, in spite of outstanding gallantry, were put to death and the infantry ran. Marlborough wrote, in seemingly great sadness as well as hope, to Sarah his wife:
I am so tired that I have but strength enough to tell you that we have had this day a very bloody battle; the first part of the day we beat their foot, and afterwards their horse. God Almighty be praised, it is now in our powers to have what peace we please.
But the following year the armies were greater than ever and the war continued.
When a weary Marlborough returned to London it was to find the politicians at their own war and the Queen seeking vicious revenge. She was determined to rid her government of Whig domination. The political order was about to change. Sunderland was sacked, so was Godolphin and Harley returned as a Tory government leader with his Secretary of State, Henry St John, a Jacobite sympathizer and no stranger to personal scandal. The Queen had them back, nestled to her dull, but political, bosom. But what to do about Marlborough? The answer, as ever, was war. For the tenth year Marlborough returned to the war in Europe, which was exactly what the Queen, Abigail Hill, Harley and St John wanted: Marlborough was out of the way. Did this royal cabal succeed? Harley, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, created the ill-advised South Sea Company, partly to balance the English books by trading slaves and goods in Latin America. Harley and St John also attempted to win peace with France, with the utmost secrecy.
Although Harley and St John were political manipulators, both men were important draughtsmen in the treaties which would end the war. And unlike Marlborough, Godolphin or Prince Eugene, both found it difficult to suppress their jealousies. What’s more Harley’s position, socially, politically and nationally, was about to be boosted in the most unexpected manner. In one moment of silliness, Harley became a national hero. A French refugee stabbed him with a tiny knife. Nothing serious, but the people rose to their Chancellor of the Exchequer – not a common emotion in any century. And the Queen made him Earl of Oxford and Mortimer, and gave him Godolphin’s old post as Lord Treasurer. Everything seemed in place for a successful political period other than word got about that England was in secret negotiations with that oldest enemy, France. Those at Westminster who were negotiating with France wanted Marlborough out of the way and instigated an investigation into the way he had used war funds. He was accused of using something in the order of a quarter of a million pounds for his own use. He said it was to pay for Intelligence. Marlborough’s real allies were the other leaders of the Grand Alliance, the countries he had led to so many victories. The King of Prussia and the Elector of Hanover set out their belief in his innocence in a solemn document in his defence. Prince Eugene went to London to plead the cause of Marlborough. The Tory government ignored the princes of Europe. And Eugene returned, downhearted, to the war. Having previously appeared beaten, Louis XIV of France rallied his people at the news of the downfall of the man they had almost believed invincible in any warfare. The French found a surprising ally in the British government. In 1712, at the siege of Quesnoy, the Tory government sent instructions to the British commander to, in effect, not get involved in the battle.
And so, between 1713 and 1714, a series of nine agreements that came to be known as the Treaties, or more correctly, the Peace, of Utrecht brought the War of Spanish Succession to an end. Europe was carved up, boundaries drawn, territory handed over. From the Spanish Empire Britain was given Gibraltar and Minorca. From the French, Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and the island of St Christopher were handed over. So the war was over and Europe was at some sort of peace with itself. Marlborough, like the Old Pretender, was hounded into exile and in London the celebration of exile and victory was marked by squalid and spiteful scheming for the power of both throne and government.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
1714–20
The last months of Queen Anne’s reign found Great Britain in a bad-tempered political mood, with the Queen full of gout and rotten temper even less capable than before of controlling her government; Harley and St John, now styled Viscount Bolingbroke, were at each other’s throats and the Tories were seeking spiteful revenge over the Whigs they had displaced. The government was on its last legs. Bolingbroke, who resented being only a viscount and wanted to be an earl, was bent on getting rid of Harley. The ruling Tories were split. Some didn’t like the terms of the Treaties of Utrecht. Others wouldn’t agree the orderly succession of the throne. Some wanted James Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender, the son of James II, to be King. Others wanted George of Hanover. As for Harley, he was in a sad state; he drank too much. He was incapable of managing the government (he had never been very good at it, drunk or sober) and he was politically and mentally befuddled. Above all, he was showing less and less respect for the Queen. At the Cabinet Council on 27 July, in apparent and terrible distress, she dismissed Harley as Lord Treasurer and ordered him to surrender his white staff of office. It looked as though Bolingbroke had won. He had not. The Queen was hardly long for the world and her more sage ministers said that she should make Charles Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury (1660–1718) Lord High Treasurer – in all but name what is now called First Lord of the Treasury and Prime Minister. Shrewsbury was one of the seven signatories of the document inviting William of Orange to come to England in 1688 and so he was no stranger to intrigue at Westminster and court.
The Tory Party had also set themselves the task of prosecuting the exiled M
arlborough and making him repay the hundreds of thousands of pounds which he said he had spent on spies – a statement supported by the European Princes. The Tories were in spiteful mood. They said he had pocketed the money for himself. However, Marlborough was not without his friends. The Whigs, in opposition, kept in touch with him and had a common interest: siding with the Hanoverians in the matter of the succession. They got ready to put the fifty-two-year-old George, the Elector of Hanover (who had written in defence of Marlborough), the great-grandson of James I, on the throne of England. Elector was the title given to a German Prince entitled to vote for, or elect, the Emperor. And the reason this Prince, the Elector of Hanover, was next in line to the throne of Great Britain was that the 1701 Tory-dominated Parliament had passed the Act of Settlement which proclaimed that no Catholic could ever be monarch, and, what’s more, that no one married to a Catholic could be monarch. It also stated that if William III and his sister-in-law, Anne, had no heirs, then the British throne should be inherited by Sophia of Hanover (a granddaughter of James I) or her line – as long as they were Protestants. The Whigs, knowing they had the open support of the Hanoverians were making it clear that they had military as well as political support to oppose what they saw as the continuation of the Jacobite cause. This did not mean that the nation was behind the Whig position and it was reasonable to suppose that the nation, if not openly split, would be uneasy over yet another rebellion and counter-movement together with the very real possibility of Catholic support coming from France. Yet again, the navy kept a weather eye for any movement of the French fleet.
On 1 August 1714, forty-nine-year-old Queen Anne breathed her last and the nation breathed a collective sigh, for no uprising came. As none of Queen Anne’s eighteen pregnancies had survived beyond childhood, the Protestant George, the Elector of Hanover, waited to be called to London – not that he cared one jot for the place. He liked the British, whose language he could not speak, even less. But, for the moment, that mattered not. He was Protestant and he would become King of a firmly Protestant State. Moreover, the British were not simply proud to be Protestant, they were full of arrogance in the fact that they were not Catholics. That is not the same as anti-Catholic. It is simply an eighteenth-century British view that Protestantism was superior. The British saw themselves as different, economically prosperous and thereby superior to Continental Europe. And the nation’s prosperity coincided with this assurance of Protestantism. There was a common sense that Protestantism was the free and obvious religious persuasion of the successful. And the written word had much to do with it: in 1662 Parliament had passed the Licensing Act which banned all publications that didn’t conform to official Church teachings. But by 1695, just nineteen years before the death of Anne, that Licensing Act was allowed to lapse and the printing presses were freed.
In Scotland, England and Wales, printing became more than business, it unblocked the political, social and, most importantly, the religious arteries of the nations. The first London daily newspaper appeared in 1702; provincial papers carried the latest from London; and Parliamentary reporting was probably more extensive than it is today. This meant that people began to get an idea that they were part of something much greater than their provincial existence had thus far allowed them to think: Great Britain.
This then was the nation of the new monarch: the beginning of the Hanoverian reign of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. There were six Hanoverian monarchs from George I to Queen Victoria and it was a curious dynasty. Nevertheless, on 18 September 1714, George, Elector of Hanover, sailed up the Thames and landed at Greenwich. The people of Britain had what they wanted: a Protestant succession.
In other words, George I became King of Great Britain because it was convenient to the British. He had watched their vicious skirmishing with considerable distaste, especially when they accused his friend Marlborough of misappropriating war funds. His petition defending Marlborough had been ignored with open contempt – even though he was the heir to the throne. But, like William of Orange, he found it convenient to be King and, after all, senseless to refuse the Crown and patronizing to do so. George, like most princes, had his own rules. For example, having married his cousin he then divorced her and locked her up in Ahlden Castle for thirty-two years – the rest of her life. She was guilty of adultery and George, a Lutheran, took this very seriously. But he also took two of his mistresses very seriously. One of them he made the Duchess of Kendal, and the other became the Duchess of Darlington. He would expect the British exchequer to provide for them both (and him) and when they got into financial difficulties (as he did also) to bail them out.
He understood little of the political system and held many of its guardians in contempt, even though he needed wise political management as the previous year or so had been filled with spite, vengeance and the very real risk of civil war. What was more, the Jacobites, the supporters of the Old Pretender, were not yet done. It was said, by the Jacobites of course, that five out of six people in England supported them. This is doubtful, but certainly there were many who didn’t like the idea of a German-speaking King using English resources for Hanoverian ambitions in Europe. And the gov-ernment’s spies were sending in reports of plans for a landing in England, for a general uprising. Then on 1 September 1715 Louis XIV died.
Some suggest that this was a blow to the Jacobite cause. Perhaps, it was, but the Treaties of Utrecht stated that the French would no longer support the Jacobites. Yet what treaty was ever signed but to be adjusted at a later date? The Scots, as ever hopeful, raised the Jacobite standard. It was a good and understandable rebellion against the seemingly alien Hanoverian authority in Scotland. But although it would not be the last uprising, it was not much likely of success. If indeed 10,000 men did fall in with the colours, there was little sign of what they could worthwhile do, nor what likely support they had elsewhere other than from a not very strong group of northern gentry in England and, more importantly, from Scottish exiles in France. The accession of George I had wrecked the political ambitions of the Tories and of the Jacobite sympathizers. The Earl of Mar, who had called out his Jacobites in Perth, had been in Queen Anne’s government, but was sacked by George’s advisers. In France, the Old Pretender, James Edward Stuart, had been told what he wanted to hear – that now was the time to strike – but his advisers were wrong. The Fifteen, as the Jacobite rising of 1715 is known, ended with the Old Pretender escaping to France in February the following year and from there to Rome, where he died in 1766 and was buried at St Peter’s. But the Fifteen uprising gave the Whigs good reason to strengthen the authority of the government, even to the extent of preventing the King creating new peerages which might have upset the balance of power. And within six years, Robert Walpole, a Norfolk squire, would become the first Prime Minister of Great Britain. The uprising was also an easy opportunity for the Whigs and government to claim that anything Tory should be seen as suspicious as they were, as a political grouping, Jacobite sympathizers and therefore potential subversives. Not surprising then that after the Fifteen, the Tories were a broken political force – for the moment.
In spite of the apparent ease with which the rebellion had been put down, there was a fear in the country that there could just be a chance of a Stuart, a Jacobite, revival and therefore the possibility of yet another confrontation with France. And there was, in any case, more to the Scottish uprising than simply wanting the Stuart line to continue. For example, many – perhaps most – Scots thought little of the Union of England and Scotland. There was little evidence of its benefit to them. The Act of 1707 which had brought England and Scotland together had demolished the Scottish Parliament. Even though that assembly had itself been largely governed from London, it had represented some semblance of a distinctively Scottish voice in the sometimes disparate Scottish nation.
Also when the eleventh Earl of Mar raised the Jacobite standard at Braemar in September 1715, he was doing so as a man who had served the last Stuart, Queen Anne, well, an
d had, by all accounts, attempted to make the Union work. But his motives were probably not purely those of a Jacobite. If George I had given him a profitable post, he would have stayed with the monarch. Scottish historians may dispute this point, but it’s certainly true that having been rejected by George I, Mar was no longer to be counted upon. And Mar believed he could count on the Episcopalian Church in Scotland and the countryside indulgences of what was still a near feudal system based on allegiance to a family.
The Whig revenge against the Fifteen’s leader was fairly mild. The Lords Derwentwater and Kenmure (who had risen in support of the Stuarts) were executed after the Battle of Preston in November 1715, but many others were allowed to escape. Even some who were condemned to death, for example at Carlisle, were never hanged. In fact, two years after the rising, in 1717, the government’s Act of Grace gave free pardon to all who’d taken part, except to the Macgregors. The Macgregors didn’t expect a free pardon because they didn’t exist, at least not officially.
The Macgregors were considered as little more than bloodthirsty criminals and raiders. At the start of the 1600s the Macgregors had been on yet another raid, this time a very bloody one in Glen Fruin. It became known in Scottish history as the Slaughter of Lennox and the then Earl of Argyll was charged with bringing the Macgregors to account. The chief of the clan Macgregor crossed the borders to plead his case to his King, James VI of Scotland and James I of England. But Macgregor never made it. He was arrested, then hanged. And, in 1610, a government commission issued an order of fire and sword against the Macgregors – in other words, an order to hunt them down. In 1617, Parliament abolished the name Macgregor. So there was no pardon for the Macgregors who continued to oppose authority. Among their number, incidentally, was Rob Roy.
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